The Re- Series

Parts I, II, and III

Using the prefix “Re-” to invoke concepts such as “renew”, “rediscover”, and “repair”, the series—inspired by journeys to Tibet, Angkor Wat, and The Silk Road—is at once a reconciliation of life split between two hemispheres, a generous spiritual offering, and a hopeful plea for intercultural understanding. In Shen Wei’s utterly original style—blending dance, theater, visual art, and Chinese opera—we partake on the artist’s journey through three of the world’s most mysterious, magnificent societies. A deeply moving, transcendent story of spiritual and geographic “coming home” told through breathtaking movement, photography, and other materials ‘found’ by Shen Wei in the jungles, deserts, and mega-cities of the Far East.

The 2009 Premiere

The 2009 premiere is the first-ever showing of all three parts in one evening, and the world premiere of Part III. Inspired by Shen Wei’s 2008 journeys between a hyper-modern Beijing and China’s old Silk Road, Part III integrates images and textures from the old Silk Road with a present-day Beijing to create a bracing vision of a “new” China.

Part III follows on the international triumph of parts I (Tibet) and II (Angkor Wat), completing Shen Wei’s impassioned response to Orient after some fourteen years abroad. The 2009 premieres also present Part II, created by Shen Wei in Montreal for the Grands Ballets in 2007, for the first time in the United States. For the 2009 premiere, Shen Wei has reimagined the work for his own company.

Part I

Part I, based on Shen Wei’s extensive travels among the Tibetan people, is a deeply personal—even spiritual—dance, incorporating traditional Tibetan chants and a stunning, full-stage Tibetan Mandala (made of colorful paper shards). With movement drawn from Shen Wei’s experience of oxygen deficiency and lowered center of gravity on the Tibetan Steppe, The Boston Globe describes Part I as a space where “purity and nirvana have become one.” Set to the music of the Kathmandu-based Tibetan nun, Ani Choying Drolma, John Rockwell of The New York Times writes that “the dancing is brilliant, and the patterns are powerfully compelling.” The 2009 performance updates the 2006 original, incorporating new sound and projections. “Shen is a perfectionist’s perfectionist, and his revisions have resulted in…triumph” (Washington Post, 2008).

Part II

Part II is a large-scale work combining two of Shen Wei’s trademark choreographic styles—tableaux vivante and transference. Inspired by Shen Wei’s study of traditional Cambodian art forms, the strained tangle of Banyon trees at Angkor Wat, and Buddhist and Hindi impressions on the walls of that ancient empire, Part II is a “work of beauty so singular it literally fossilizes the audience” (Le Devoir). The work showcases Shen Wei’s characteristic surrealism: other-worldly, transported figures invoke the intricate, mysterious friezes on Angkor’s submerged walls, culminating in a massive human tableau—bleached, exposed, immobile, transcendent. Featuring environmental sound collected on-site from the forgotten temples scattered throughout the jungle, and music played by a local band of artists disabled by the Khmer Rouge atrocities, Part II was commissioned and premiered at Les Grands Ballets de Montreal in 2007 and makes its US debuts at the American Dance Festival and Lincoln Center Festival 2009.

Part III

Celebrating China’s vast and divergent religious traditions, languages, and cultural histories, Part III contemplates China’s role as a once and future arbiter of trade, ideas, and populations. Rather than looking back, Part III uses the Silk Road as a grand metaphor to explore China’s future as a convergence of cultures—from the Middle East, the West, and its own myriad ethnic populations. 

In Shen Wei’s interdisciplinary style—blending modern dance with elements from the theater, visual arts, Chinese Opera, philosophy, and architecture—Part III is the largest and most dynamic of all three works, utilizing imagery, sound, and artifacts from both the old Silk Road and hyper-modern, present-day China.

As such, Part III’s unique movement vocabulary—virtuosic, vibrant, electrifying—is inspired by this central dialogue between past and future, the individual and the collective, drawing at once on traditional imagery and impressions captured by Shen Wei on the old Silk Road, and on his experience in a radically transformed Beijing while choreographing the 2008 Olympic Opening Ceremonies.

In an artistic departure, Shen Wei Dance Arts has commissioned new music from Pulitzer Prize-winning David Lang and experimental violinist Todd Reynolds (of ETHEL fame) to create an original soundscape integrating a score for violin, laptop, and Shen Wei’s ‘found material’ (recorded voices, folk music, environmental sound, etc.) from the Silk Road.

Shen Wei will design the sets, costumes, and make-up. SWDA has commissioned new lighting designs for all three parts from the acclaimed Jennifer Tipton.